Dr Nikolas Gunn

nikolas gunn
Departmental Lecturer in English Language and Literature
nikolas.gunn@ell.ox.ac.uk

I specialise in the languages and literatures of the North Sea region in the earlier Middle Ages, but especially Early English and Old Norse. I am particularly interested in contact between England and Scandinavia during the period 800-1200 and my current research has focused on lexical borrowing between Old English and Old Norse. My most recent publication in Anglia examined two Old English compound words with biblical associations borrowed into Old Norse and I recently submitted a chapter on the stylistic use of Old English in eleventh-century skaldic verse for a volume stemming from the AHRC Gersum Project. I am working on turning my thesis on Anglo-Scandinavian contact into a monograph for Brepols.

My work is ultimately rooted in the belief that modern sociolinguistic, stylistic and pragmatic theories have much to offer "traditional" philological approaches to the study of the languages and texts of the period. I also maintain interests in translation, both practically and theoretically.

I currently teach the following papers at Oxford:

Year 1:

- Introduction to English Language

- Early Medieval Literature

 

Year 2:

- History of the English Language to c.1800

- Literature in English 1350-1550

I studied for my BA (2011) at the University of Leeds and my MA (2012) and Wolfson-funded PhD (2017) at the University of York. I worked as Teaching Fellow in Old and Middle English Literature at University College London (2017-18) before taking up my lectureship at Oxford.

I am a member of TORCH's Early Medieval Britain and Ireland Network.

Publications

  • Ransacking the wordhord: the stylistic use of Old English lexical borrowings in Viking Age skaldic poetry

    January 2021
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    Chapter
    |
    Gersum: New Approaches to the Scandinavian Legacy in Medieval Britain
    This chapter assesses the use of a small selection of Old English loanwords in Viking Age skaldic verse (hearra/harri, heretoga/hertogi, sāwol/sála, godfæder/goðfaðir). Drawing on modern sociolinguistic and stylistic theory, it argues that the perceived "Englishness" of these lexical borrowings is less interesting than the way they were used creatively in performance to elicit certain artistic, cognitive and ideological effects.

  • Translating the Gospel in Viking Age England: The Evidence from Two Old Norse Loan Translations from Old English

    December 2019
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    Journal article
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    Anglia: Zeitschrift fuer Englische Philologie
    A recent resurgence of interest in Old Norse linguistic borrowings in Old English has greatly expanded our knowledge of the contact situation between these two speech communities in the early medieval period and beyond. How- ever, there are a significant number of words that have been considered borrow- ings in the “other” direction, i. e. from Old English to Old Norse, which have not attracted the same amount of attention in current scholarship. Much of this mate- rial requires reassessment and this paper provides a case study of two parallel compound formations in both languages – OE bærsynnig [mann]/ON bersynðugr [maðr] (‘one who is openly sinful; publican’), and OE healsbōc/ON hálsbók (‘phy- lactery, amulet, lit. ‘neck-book’) – that have traditionally been considered loan translations from Old English to Old Norse with little evidence other than their formation from cognate elements. In the absence of clear-cut linguistic criteria for identifying loan translations between these two closely related languages, this paper draws on a range of literary evidence to argue for a strong likelihood of a relationship between the two compounds. Both words offer important evidence for biblical translation practices, and contribute to our knowledge about the Christianisation of Norse speaking peoples and Anglo-Norse language contact in Viking Age England.
    Old English, Old Norse, Medieval Literature, Medieval Language, Translation, Language Contact, Multilingualism, Historical Linguistics, English Language, Viking Age, Medieval England, Medieval Scandinavia, Viking Age England, Viking Age Scandinavia
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